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I’m writing this, because the public option in the new health care reform bill is in trouble, and unless we stand up for it, we’re just going to end up with a re-working of what we’ve already got. Insurance companies making a profit at all of our expenses, while providing us with health care that is ranked #38, right behind Costa Rica and right before Slovenia.
I personally can’t believe that single-payer isn’t on the table right now, considering that most of us have a horror story or two to tell about the current situation. My most recent one was the day in February when Gwynnie woke up coughing and coughing and coughing, we went to the urgent care center in Manhattan Beach (an upscale locale) and waited and waited and waited. As Gwynnie said “We went in right after breakfast and when we left it was dark! That’s so crazy!” and it was. They saw us for 25 minutes. My mother is trying to figure out how to live on a retirement that will have health insurance eating up half of what she has a month. My brother hasn’t been to see a doctor since the Reagan administration (I kid, but not really ;o) We all have stories like that.
I also have a friend whose daughter fell off a jungle gym while in Canada, and injured her elbow and needed surgery. Afterwards she paid a paltry sum of $200 if I remember correctly. Then she came home to LA where she has some of the best insurance in the world and to get the final check-up, the cast off, and visit with a doctor, she paid close to $1000 as a copay. yep.
If you haven’t watched it yet, please watch this:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V2sFT7T0mCs
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rQ1lPPTPSR4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txnw6Jdu1hI&feature=channel_page
http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=SickoTheMovie&view=videos
Finally (not everyone on this list will know) when second daughter was 6 months old, darling husband and I were just out of graduate school and he had just started his job at a mere $30,000 pre-taxes, with no benefits whatsoever, and we were just over the limit for receiving government healthcare through medi-cal. So we had none. Then, second daughter pulled a cup of my hot tea onto her lap and spent 10 days in the hospital burn unit, 2 surgeries, some state of the art technologies. I’ll never forget arriving at the hospital and hearing darling husband in the hallway on the verge of a breakdown asking person after person how we are going to be able to pay for this? what are we going to do? Telling them he has no insurance asking if they’ll still help us. absolutely terrified. I’ll never ever forget it.
In the end Medi-cal DID pay for the hospital stay, we were sent the bill, 5 pages $135,000. Each time she received a dose of tylenol we were charged $40. We were lucky that we made such a small amount of money or we would have never been able to pay for it all.
Now we have some of the best insurance in the US, we pay nothing but a small co-pay, but I remember what that day in August 2001 was like, and I swore that I would do everything in my power to bring the kind of healthcare to the US that means that daddies with sick and injured children don’t have to wander the halls wondering how in the world they’ll pay to keep them alive.
thanks for listening, please sign the petition…Citizens for a Public Option
xox,
Heather
My cousin had her daughter seven weeks early with no health insurance, and they wound up having to take out a loan the size of a mortgage to pay for her medical bills. They now call her their “second house”, but that is also the reason that they live in an extremely small home and have never been able to move. It’s a shame that things like that happen, and they should not be allowed to continue.
Thanks for letting me know about the petition. As public opinion has been swinging towards opposing the new health plan, I have been afraid we will end up with something that will not help us rise from #38.
These are exactly the kinds of stories that people need to tell to help people change their minds.
I want you to know that I am not trying to spam your comments. LOL. Two other bloggers I read on a fairly regular basis attended the BlogHer conference in Chicago this past weekend and got to have a luncheon with Senior White House advisor Valerie Jarret to talk about the current health care situation. There are a couple links I’d like to share with you on it:
http://queenofspainblog.com/2009/07/25/so-i-was-talking-with-the-white-house/
Loralee of Loralee’s LooneyTunes was in attendance and spoke of her HORRIBLE experience as an uninsured uber-high risk pregnant woman, because pregnancy is considered a pre-existing condition in Utah. Her story is heart wrenching. She was pregnant at the same time you and I were, giving birth to her son Aaron about a month after us. (My daughter was born on March 26th, I think within a few days of your most recent baby.)
Erin Kotecki-Vest, of the link I gave above, is sending feedback on the situation directly to the White House staff, so stop by her blog and leave a comment or email her.
http://www.blogher.com/live-blogging-senior-advisor-valerie-jarrett-talks-bloghers-about-health-care
That’s the link for the live-blog transcript of what was said in the luncheon.
Thanks for sharing your stories with us. I can relate. I am currently being sued for over $1000 for 2 stitches and some codiene from when my daughter fell down and busted her lip wide open. $1000 for 2 stitches. Seriously.
Off subject, but has mama seen this new “device”?
http://www.facebook.com/ext/share.php?sid=105432232103&h=ajgP3&u=7AiIb&ref=mf
Gee, technology has now made it easy to neglect our kids. Woohoo? I’m afraid for the babies of this country.
Wow, that story about your little girl injured, and your husband terrified made me cry. I live in Spain, where we have public health care. It’s payed by the employers and with the taxes of every citizen, depending on their salaries. Everything is free, I mean everything: surgery, checkings, quimo, transplants, emergencies, ambulance service… For the meds, we pay for the ones that are sold with no prescription.
We also complain about our health care, waiting list for surgery… but it’s really much better this way!
This issue is complicated, because we also don’t want there to be MORE government control over what we do with our bodies. We are rapidly losing the right to take natural supplements, and it’s more and more difficult to buy non GMO foods…
I agree that something MUST be done to reduce Big Pharma’s hold on our government and our money. Problem is, all the “stories” in the world don’t change the fact that at this moment in time, Big Pharma has their hands in pockets all over our government. It’s going to be very difficult to get them to go away…especially when they are funding some things “vital” to our economy.
If we were to “make a deal with the devil”, and told them to go away-that we wanted reasonable expenses for our health care and any meds we choose to take…there would be a cost involved.
You see, I doubt they would just take their “dollies” and go home….more than likely, they will place something heavy on the otherside of the scale. They will say: “Fine, we’ll lower our prices to the appropriate amount, but then we want all natural drugs to be outlawed, so that we “get” more customers-because without sales, there’s no money, and no money means we pull funding out of all these other lobbied budgets.
Or perhaps the “right” to legally patent natural substances as their own, making all the other natural companies pay through the nose to use their “patented” technology….indirectly putting them out of business.
If that sounds far fetched, we’re already teetering on the edge of no more B6 in supplements:
http://www.nowpublic.com/health/patenting-nature-fda-bed-big-pharma-over-vitamin-b6
A couple of my stories: My father in law was Canadian, living in the US. He had a heart attack, and the surgery cost something like $250,000. He lost everything-the house he loved, all his possession. He had to leave the country because he could not pay for such an expensive medical bill. My husband had a brain hemorraghe a few years ago that nearly cost him his life. After his critical care, 9 hour brain surgery, and all his tests and everything, I was sooo thankful that the only bill I received was for Parking at the hospital, and the ambulance drive which totalled $100.00. If that had been in the US, we would have no chance at recovering from the financial crisis.
When I was visiting here in Canada one of the first times, I got a serious bladder/kidney infection, and went to ER. I waited about 2 hours, and they prescribed something for me. I dreaded going to the pharmacy because I remembered this particular antibiotic was over $100 in the US…I could only imagine what it was going to be here, with me uninsured….
I got my meds and my bill, and it came to $17.00.
I was suddenly acutely aware of just how much we’d been ripped off.
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this issue is close to my heart. after our move to maine we were without insurance, i slipped on the ice and broke my elbow. we made too much money to get state insurance. luckily it was a small facture and i didn’t require surgery, but i still only went to urgent care and never to an orthopedic doctor, never went to follow ups or had PT because after the $1200 bill we just couldn’t afford it. my elbow hurts every day. and i have lost full range of motion.
as an RN i hear from pt all the time worrying about there insurance, how long is the stay, will they have to leave before they are ready because insurce will not cover the whole stay? it sickens me. and anyone who sit son the sidelines with great insurance and says others should not have it need a good ass kicking. it is easy to sit in priveldge and say others can go without when you yourself have never had to go without. and that who line of thinking that “i work hard and pay my taxes i should have to pay for someone who uis lazy to get insurance. or some wellfare mama with 10 kids milking the sysytem, or those illegals are the cause” are just selfish red herring bullcrap lines. if everyone just thought for one minute how they would feel being faced with $10,000′s of in medical bills, they would shut up! imagine having to pick between medication and food? or surgery and forclosure? why? we live in the best damn country! we are rich and all powerful, we are a “god fearing” “christian nation” except we have no real charity for our everyday man. you either make it alone or drown. bull!
heather in maine
I agree that something has to be done, but I don’t think that Gov’t holds the answers. I think that it’s pure folly to expect the same organization who got us in this mess (the Gov’t) to fix it.
The Gov’t is already so deep in debt, it doesn’t have the funds to take on an adventure like single-payer health care. If it prints money to cover the costs then the value of the money we currently have will go down. That becomes a hidden tax (inflation). In addition our taxes will all go up significantly.
But my biggest concern is that I want to negotiate with the doctor for my care, not have to go through some bureaucrat who will determine if I’ve got enough life left in me to deem me worthy of care. (Rationing…)
I feel for those who are in a situation to have such high medical bills, but often times if you don’t have insurance the hospital will lower the bill or even waive the bill altogether. This happened to my sister. She fell while pregnant and got a concussion. Because of this they induced her early, her baby was in the NICU and the bills for everything were totally overwhelming. They explained to the hospital how much they made, that they had no insurance and couldn’t see how they could EVER pay the bill. The hospital waived all except $5000, a do-able amount…
By law the hospital has to treat everyone, regardless of their ability to pay.
Something has to change, but putting Gov’t in control isn’t the answer…
I also am torn, torn, torn. I worry just like one of the previous posters that this may give the government more contrl over our bodies and our personal rights. That it could further bankrupt the country and/or raise taxes so high that we have troule affording food for our kids. I have no perfect solution, unless we were able to go back in time to where health care was affordable with and without insurance and insurance companies didn’t rule the world. How did we go in 50 years from a hospital birth costing less than a hundred dollars, to costing 15 to 40 thousand??? Inflation of the dollar is not that high for bread or milk, thank God.
We as a family have had insurance off and on throughout our marriage. Lots of different plans, all bought by us as individuals, and boy do they cost a lot. The best one we had for coverage was during my first pregnancy and took up over 30% of our monthly income, which we deemed necessary because of my pregnancy. We paid about $6500 for our daughters birth including premiums and hospital bills. Two years later and a different plan we had our son. He cost right around the same amount, premium was lower, hospital cost was much higher.
Then we lived without insurance for four years. Four hard years of payind down debt, my husband returning to school and scrimping on everything else. Hoping and praying that no one would fall down the stairs or be in a car wreck. We only needed to go to the dr. once in the whole four years, for my sons psoriasis, where they prescirbed a topical cream, we ordered it and went to pick it up. $114 for a small tube of cream, we said no thank you and left. His psoriasis is controlled now through diet only and he is thriving. We use natural meds as much as possible, eat healthy, and my parents bring us prescription meds from Mexico which we have only needed to use once.
Now we have insurance again. It would protect our investments and our family if we were in an accident. We can have one physical per year on them. The biggest problem with it, no maternity coverage whatsoever. Maternity coverage would be another 300-400 per month. Way out of our budget. We would love to have more children, but how in the world can we do it? We have contemplated using a midwife, they are rare here seeing as they have only been legal for the past year. But this scares my husband who was at my first two deliveries and saw how much I bled. So some people tell me that the government option would be bad because I would then never be able to have another baby, and yet I feel like I may already be in that boat. Because we make a little too much for medicaid and not enough for outside insurance, we are stuck and our family has now been planned because of it, and I hate it!
If the government can come up with something that can help families like mine without bankrupting the country or taking control away from us, then I may just be for it.
Right there with you. Although CHIP says no child will be left uninsured, we were told we made too much money to get help. We didn’t make enough to actually pay for anything, nor did we have insurance. My husband was working for $6 an hour at one point, for a family of 5, and we had no way of paying for anything. We spent 2 years praying we had no serious injuries. My husband may lose his second job, which means back to $100 a week to live off of. I won’t be able to afford the $48 a month for my prescription, let alone everything else. I can’t afford my inhalers, so if I have a major asthma attack I lay down instead of rushing to the hospital as I turn bluish. And my girls need dental care we can’t afford to copay $300 a month for right now.
I always thought we would be able to do better for our children, and now here we are. 
Rachele- I just checked out that link you posted- YIPES! And the one parent actually asked if they had a feeding and changing timer. How hard is it to “remember” to feed your child when they’re hungry and change them when they’re wet? I’m sorry- if you need a timer for those things, you shouldn’t really be a parent. We did the “cry it out” thing with our first for exactly one night- she cried for two hours, even with me going in to comfort her every ten minutes. With the second, we just let her do her own thing- and she sleeps just fine. The first does now, too- although her “thing” is different from her sister’s. But that’s okay, because they aren’t the same person.
I cannot ever imagine giving something like this to a new parent- talk about a way to undermine their confidence in themselves!
On the other side of the pond….My U.S. insurance refused to pay for my daughter’s pregnancy & birth. So WE paid, for ALL of it! (She’s almost 2 & we just finished paying) This would NOT have been possible in the states. HERE the week in the NICU costs us 2,500 just for her to be there & observed. that’s IT! I can’t tell you what it would cost stateside but it’s definately NOT that low! Granted it was hard but when so MANY people have access to insurance (we didn’t qualify because technically we DID have insurance, it just wouldn’t pay) it costs LESS! OK so there are some WEIRD things over here but some things are worth the expense. (apparently we get better care because being non-interventionist costs less?) The MILITARY in the states has care for EVERYONE on it’s paylist & family members. WE already HAVE certain things in the states but it’s not available to everyone. What would we be changing? Oh I know the insurance companies that are in it for profit wouldn’t be in business anymore, people would switch!
Heather: the story about your daughter breaks my heart. I am Canadian and although we sometimes complain about out healthcare system (who doesn’t!!) I never forget how lucky we are. We take for granted that access to healthcare is available whenever we need it. I can’t imagine having to bing a chequebook to the doctor when my child is sick or wondering how I’m going to pay for an emergency room visit or hospital stay. Parents of sick children have so much to worry about and shouldn’t also have to worry about how they are going to pay for care that their sick child needs. Here the same care that is given to the Prime Minister’s children is also given to the children of a mum on welfare.
Heather in Maine: Your story breaks my heart. I slipped on the ice this winter and broke my elbow. I went to the ER that night (Friday) and recieved the emergency care I needed (including an xray). On Monday morning we called my family doctor and got in that afternoon. He had already seen my xray and had already talked to an Orthopedic surgeon. He made a phone call and within an hour I had had a CT scan and was waiting in the Orthopedic surgeons office. I didn’t need surgery but the surgeon followed up with me for 5 months reffering me to Occupational theraphy and Physiotheraphy as needed. I have my full range of motion back and though my arm is achy and tight at times I think that will resolve in time. All this cost me $60 for a splint which we can claim on my husband’s work plan and will probably get all or most of it back.
I see clips (on the Daily Show!!) of what republicans say about our healthcare system and government run healthcare in general and it’s just not true. We have excellent care that is there when needed.
WeedEater: could you explain this comment more – “But my biggest concern is that I want to negotiate with the doctor for my care, not have to go through some bureaucrat who will determine if I’ve got enough life left in me to deem me worthy of care. (Rationing…)”
I don’t quite understand it. I have heard this before and I’m not sure if it’s supposed to relate to Canadian and UK healthcare or the system that is being proposed in the US.
I live in Canada, and even though I’ve been to the hospital only 3 times in my life for minor things and am not a huge fan of doctors in general, I am so thankful that medical expenses are not one of my worries in life! Also, my first daughter was born in Australia and we had to pay for everything out-of-pocket. I spent 3 days in the hospital, and the whole thing only cost me $1500. Something is definitely wrong with the system in America.
THANK YOU! Thanks for posting this. I’m a Canadian living in the US at hte moment (we’re here temporarily and moved in January) and I think I’m going to lose my mind listening to all the uneducated, holier than thou, ‘I don’t need no public health care’ combined with ignorance about the way the system really works and who is really getting hurt by this pathetic system called health care in the US.
All these right wing nuts (yes, I’m specifically referring to the nuts here and not everyone!) that seem to think it is a practical use of their time insulting and criticizing the Canadian system (with out right wrong information, it is ridiculous!) rather than actually look at their own system in the US and admit all the problems are unbelievable. I don’t get it. Do they really think the US system works? Are they so sheltered that they think everyone is like them and has good health insurance?
I wish I could do something to help!!! You guys need a better system here! (oh, that and actual maternity/parental leave! Why don’t people scream and yell about the lack of that??)
Thanks for letting me rant
The US system works fine – for the health insurers! They institute increases in premiums of 40% annually. (Rent control in LA county is 5% annual increases just to put it in perspective).
The system in Australia used to work very well – at least it was when I left almost 17 years ago. It’s another national health situation.
I am ready to go off planet – who wants to come?
;o)
We had our second daughter at home with a midwife back in Feb 2009. (which we paid for out of our own pocket because our ins may or may not cover it – $5000) Fabulous birth! and great experience
…that was until the midwife discovered a small cyst after delivery…we decided to go to the hospital to have it removed (midwife did not feel comfortable removing it herself), hoping to only be a few hours, then come home and enjoy our new family…
THREE DAYS LATER they let me leave (only because I was endlessly annoying them to let me go home!) and a few weeks later we got a hospital bill for $2000, another doctor bill for a few hundred more, and other piddly things that cost another hundred or so! So far I am trying to refuse to pay by just delaying payment and telling them that my husband is working AND going to school AND I don’t have a paying job (unless I can find a grant to be a mother ;o). I felt like I was being punished for having a homebirth
I want to move to another country…my DH wants to go to New Zealand…
Full story of birth and aftermath at my blog:
http://mamaevausa.blogspot.com/2009/03/birth-of-daciana.html
http://mamaevausa.blogspot.com/2009/06/my-3-hour-tour-after-dacianas-birth.html
Thanks for reading!
Wow…all this makes me so happy to be living in the UK. We have it all for free. The NHS is one of the best things this country has. Free healthcare at the point of need and around £7 for each prescription item no matter how expensive it is to the health service.
Hi Weedeater,
You brought up some common arguments that I wanted to quickly address. The first of which is that people have to go through a bureaucrat right now to get care, and if it hasn’t happened to you personally yet, just give it time. The insurance companies are ‘for profit’ and they don’t get that way by paying for the care that you need. They get the profit through denial of care.
I’ve heard it said that all our government would need to do is close one of our ‘offshore loopholes’ and the corporations that right now pay nothing in taxes, would pay for single-payer health care.
It might be fine for the occasional person to negotiate out of their bill, but wouldn’t it be better to revamp the system?
Finally, and I think this is so important. We’ve gotten it in our heads that corporations will do what we want and that government is the enemy. Our government is answerable to us. If a single-payer healthcare system won’t cover what we need or want we have to gather enough voices and get a law passed. There is no way to get an insurance company to cover something that won’t make them money.
xox,
Heather
Hi Erika (and all the others on this blog who are from Canada, UK, or Australia),
I’m wondering what you think when you hear us (meaning the united states) talking about this, can you believe it that there are people arguing against it?
xox,
Heather
Heather, in response to your question, as a Canadian and newly in the US – yup, I can’t believe it that people are arguing against it! It is seriously mind boggling to us! We read the letters to the editor in the local newspaper each day and just about scream! The really crazy thing is, they’re not even proposing getting rid of the current system with insurance, HMOs and all that junk, they’re talking about adding on a public system as well, so we can’t understand why people then complain about how this new system will deny them the right to do X, Y or Z. If you have good insurance, this isn’t going to change from everything I’ve heard.
Also, a note for everyone, PLEASE don’t believe what you hear in the media in the US about the Canadian health care system, the inaccuracies are astounding and they’ll use a single case to try and suggest that there is nothing good to come of a government health care system (kinda like saying one person had a bad home birth so the entire idea is bad, you know?) There is some good information out there, but you have to dig. Us Canadians admit our system isn’t perfect, but you know what, we all insurance through the government, we and our doctors decide on our care (not the government, not the insurance who says I’m not allowed a test because it is too expensive), we get choices of where we go that aren’t dictated by which clinic our insurance deals with and such.
I’d be happy to share any info I can with anyone interested
Health care for all (that doesn’t result in bankruptcy!) is a bit of a passion of mine 
RE: Adrenaline Rush… can’t help but be reminded of Frogger…
We’ve had to buy our own insurance for some time, but my husband’s work helps pay the bills. He’s in non-profit and does some good things.. the money should be going to help the families he works for, but it pays for our high($4000/year) deductible insurance. But we can’t buy that anymore because I just got diagnosed with something called an Arnold Chiari Malformation, which can have some nasty complications, but for me it’s just no big deal. Really no big deal. It is the policy of the insurance companies to never insure anyone with ACM (which you’re born with). So I’m now “high risk” even though I’m in perfect health. I made the mistake of taking insurance from a school system I worked for for 5 months and then got laid off because of budget cuts and low seniority. I “have” to take COBRA from them because I’m high risk. It is my only choice now. It’s good insurance, but do you know how much it is a month??? All I can say is now I know why the schools around here are broke. After my COBRA runs out I will be allowed to enter a “high risk” pool of some sort and get some other expensive insurance. I don’t need this kind of coverage.. I just want something for if my kid spills hot tea on herself.. but they won’t sell me that kind anymore. People with ACM have asked if they should get their kids tested for it and I tell them NO! If they get diagnosed but don’t need treatment, it will just prevent them from having health care choices when they are older. The system we have now discourages anyone from getting diagnosed. It makes me regret getting my head checked out because of the strange pains I was having. Doc was worried about an aneurysm and I was worried about a pre-existing condition. No aneurysm. I’m fine. But now I have no choice for insurance. Some people are afraid that having public insurance will take away choices. What choices? Seriously, what is this planet they live on where they get the kind of care they want through the company they want for the price they want? Because I’d like to move there, especially if it’s here in the US because how convenient would that be?
Sorry.. ranting…
i have to comment on the “rationing of care” and the “wanting to keep it between you and your doctor and not some outside person/government” is anyone else here in the USA getting healthcare? do you go to the doctor on your provider list even if you don’t like them too much? do you only get the medications your insurance covers even if you could feel better with something else? do you only get care for conditions that are new? have you gone to the doctor for that “yoe” issue only to have your insurnce say “you pay as it was preexisting?” then you have someone else deciding what care you get. if you need to stay in the hospital for something for longer then the insurance allowed days you pay, it is never between you and your doctor. it is always up to the insurance comapny on whether or not you get something covered. whether or not you get the care you need. or try this… you pay $1000.00 a month and still have co-pays, still have to pay 10%, 20%, 30% and have a deductable. this isn’t good. this sucks. it is shameful that we allow people to go without healthcare in this “great nation”. no one should EVER EVER have to choose food or medication. sugery or mortgage. no one should have to watch their child die for lack of funds. no one should have to pay $100.00 a pill for something that cost 10 cents to make. we have been scammed into think that “socialized” (i know scary word!) medicine means rationed care, forgetting that is exactly what we are getting.
what chaps my backside even more is all those people in washington against this are actually getting taxpayer socialized medicine. i pay, you pay, we all pay and they get the best while we sit by and get the crap end. bull!
heather in maine (yes, i do get heated about this issue. lol)
weedeater- sorry to tell you, but in the privatized system, you still play “mother-may-i?” only instead of asking the gov’t you’re asking a COMPANY who’s only concern is making money.
insurance companies won’t touch one of my twins, because she was born with heart problems. what do the anti-PHC say to that? is she supposed to die because companies dont want to cover people who may have been sick and aren’t even any more? “pre-existing condition” for the rest of her life, even though it’s been fixed?! i have yet to get a straight answer from them about that. i think they’d rather not think about it, about the children their greed would kill. they’re complacent and ITS PISSING ME OFF!
whew! sorry for that, but, idk, i’m just so….grrr…about this issue…
aditi: hug! that is what i am talking about! this very issue. what the hell is the purpose of covering healthy people and leaving the sick (or use to be sick) without insurance? Oh wait that would be greed! because as we all know, money is always more important then people.
grrrr!
heather in maine
The people for whom public health insurance would be a godsend are not any different from the people who currently have awesome, affordable private insurance and are whining about paying for other people’s healthcare. It’s a matter of circumstance. My husband and I, both white and college-educated, have spent a great deal of our married life (almost five years) without health insurance. It doesn’t matter that, at our poorest, we were each working two jobs. It doesn’t matter that we applied for private health insurance and would have bought it if we could have (we were turned down due to “pre-existing conditions”). I’m so grateful my husband has a good job now with benefits, and I pray that I don’t forget what a blessing that is.
IMNSHO we are never going to get away from $40 a dose tylenol unless we have a healthcare system that has a direct link between consumers and providers. Insurance and government mandates are not a direct link. Paying out of pocket for most healthcare and carrying insurance for catastrophes only makes so much more sense to me. Afterall as ucers we already know that most health care is health-scare, or even physically harmful, as in the case of vaccinations and medicating kids with off-label psychiatric drugs. Looking at my family’s financial situation, we have been bWe will not be below the poverty line for 13 years, now we are going to afford insurance, but we will not be buying standard insurance for our family of 8. However our son who is on medicaid due to his disability may no longer have coverage due to our new income, so we may be having to pay thousands of dollars out of pocket for $40 tylenol, brought about by the government regulated third payer system. Government regulation created the current system, what makes you think that more regulation will fix it??
stupid laptop keyboard
please substitute in for the gobbeldygook
“We will be able to afford insurance for the first time in 13 years and 6 kids.”
Dear Alison,
actually a more accurate representation of a government created healthcare system here in the US is medicare, I know plenty of older members of my family are very happy with the way that works (especially before the most recent overhaul that had too many for-profit ideas). The current insurance system isn’t an example of government run (and it’s barely regulated) it’s an example of pigs-at-the-trough, corporate-run, for-profit, medicine. And sure it would be good to get the middle-man out-the snake oil sellers, and profiteers out -our system worked better in the 70s when it wasn’t for profit.
The big problem is that we can’t let ‘free market’ ideas invade this discussion, you can’t shop around for a better price when your life is at risk. And the laws of supply and demand don’t apply when people are dying. There’s a reason why we decided collectively to support a government-run fire department, So that families who have a house burning down don’t have to worry about the bill and everyone is safer. I shudder to think what would happen if we fire departments were for-profit.
xox,
Heather
Dear Alison (again!),
Right after posting that, I read this article. Which proves us both wrong on a couple of points…I decided to post it anyway, with the caveat that I’m never wrong ;o)
xox,
Heather
like your private health care?
In Slovenia, EVERYONE has basic health insurance and vast majority of people have standard health insurance, just to name a basic difference to your system.
And since someone was talking about having to pay for a birth themselves, in Slovenia, a hospital birth and staying there for at least three days are included in the basic insurance.
… do me a favor and please state your sources for positioning US healthcare before Slovenian.
Hi MMM,
I got the information from this: http://www.photius.com/rankings/healthranks.html
and I’ve heard it quoted quite a few times before…believe me, no offense is meant! If you find out any more information (about why slovenia is ranked behind, or etc. please send it in, I’d love to know more!)
xox,
Heather
admin,
No offense taken in any way, I was just a bit upset because I am aware of how unfair the comparison is – as it says on the page you linked:
“The World Health Organization’s ranking of the world’s health systems was last produced in 2000, and the WHO no longer produces such a ranking table, because of the complexity of the task”.
But as long as we’re on the subject, I do suggest comparing a few criteria and you might be surprised about the quality of the slovenian healthcare! (C-section rates for example, since this lovely blog advocates natural births, are more than a half lower in Slovenia than in USA…).
FAbulous! From now on when I quote the list I’ll use another country as an example ;o)